openwrt News - Page 27 of 33 - CNX Software

March 21, 2016March 22, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

GearBest 2nd Anniversary Promo Offers Cheap TV Boxes and Routers

GearBest has become fairly popular since it launched two years ago, mostly thanks to aggressive pricing, promotions, and coupons, and the company is celebrating its anniversary with some more discounts with recent TV boxes as low as $23, routers for $12 and up, and other accessories. Some potentially interesting deals include: Chiptrip MXV S805 TV box with Amlogic S805 and Android 4.4 for $29.99 Beelink X2 TV box with Allwinner H3 and Android 4.4 for $26.89 MX4 TV box running Android 4.4 on Rockchip RK3229 for $22.99 Xiaomi Mi WiFi mini 802.11ac router for $28.49 (Update: also found on eBay for $21.70 shipped) oops that’s the Youth Edition, only 802.11n) EasyCast WiFi Display Dongle for $11.99 NEXX WT3020F OpenWrt compatible router for $12.74 Please note that some are flash sales with 100 to 300 pieces, and discounted prices may not be active right now. [Update: Finally, only the flash sales […]

March 2, 2016March 2, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Arduino Tian Board Combines Atmel D21 MCU, Atheros AR9342 WiSoC, and CSR8510 Bluetooth 4.0 SoC

Arduino Tian is an update of Arduino Yun board, mainly replacing Atmel ATMega32u4 8-bit MCU and Atheros AR9331 WiSoC with more recent Atmel SAMD21 32-bit Cortex M0 MCU and Atheros AR9342 WiSoC with support for dual band 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, as well as CSR8510 Bluetooth 4.0 SoC. Arduino Tian specifications: MCU part MCU – Atmel SAMD21G18 ARM Cortex-M0 MCU @ 48 MHz with 256KB flash and 32KB SRAM Digital I/O Pins – 20x GPIOs with 12x PWM and UART Analog Input Pins – 6x 12-bit ADC channels Analog Output Pins – 1x 10-bit DAC DC Current per I/0 – 7mA Operating Voltage – 3.3V “Linux” SoC part SoC – Atheros AR9342 MIPS74Kc processor @ 535 MHz System Memory 64MB DDR2 Storage – 16 MB Flash for firmware, 4 GB eMMC Flash for data Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, dual band 802.11n 2×2 2.4/5 GHz WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 + EDR (CSR8510) USB […]

February 21, 2016February 21, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

TP-LINK WiFi Router Firmware Locked Down Due to New FCC Rules

Last year the FCC rules issues new rules that would prevent installing OpenWRT, DDWRT, or other firmware, but it went viral, and finally the commission launched a consultation with the community which ended by the FCC issued a statement “Clearing the Air on Wi-Fi Software Updates” last November, making the rules more accurate saying that the rules were now “narrowly-focused on modifications that would take a device out of compliance”. However, one person named Adam recently tried to downgrade his firmware on a TP-LINK router, and the conversion now published on BattleMesh mailing list, makes it clear that the battle for “firmware freedom” may not be over: Adam: downgrading does not work I get an 18005 error upon attempting to downgrade. I want to know if this is because of the FCC’s rules regarding broadcast strength and DFS control. Has TP-Link complied with these rules and locked down its firmware […]

February 16, 2016February 16, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

DAB Embedded OpenWrt Router Board Combines Atmel SAMA5D3 SoC and Altera MAX 10 FPGA

DAB Embedded, a Belgian engineering company specialized in research and development of electronic products, has designed DAB-OWT-SAM5 router board powered by Atmel SAMA5D36 Cortex-A5 processor and Altera MAX 10 FPGA, which runs OpenWrt or Windows Embedded Compact 7, and targets IoT applications. DAB-OWT-SAM5 board specifications: SoC – Atmel SAMA5D36 ARM Cortex-A5 processor @ 536MHz with Floating-Point Unit. FPGA – Altera MAX 10 FPGA with integrated ADC (Exact part number not disclosed) System Memory – Up to 512MB DDR2 Storage – Up to 2GB NAND flash, 1Mbit SPI flash, micro SD slot Connectivity – 2x Fast Ethernet ports, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi (Direct, station mode, and soft-AP) via Atmel ATWILC1000B module Display Interface – LVDS connected to FPGA USB – 1x USB 2.0 host, 1x USB 2.0 device Expansion Connectors Wired interfaces – RS232, CAN 2.0 A/B, KNX, RS-485/422, etc… Wireless connectivity – Zigbee, Z-Wave, KNX RF, etc… Power Supply – 5V DC […]

February 8, 2016February 16, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 24 Comments

$98 Geek Force Mediatek MT7623 Router Board Features 6 GbE Ports, 3 mPCIe Slots for WiFi, 3G, or LTE (Crowdfunding)

We’ve seen a few interesting and relatively powerful router board launched last year, with the likes of MQMaker WiTi or Turris Omnia, AsiaRF has now designed Geek Force board powered by Mediatek MT7623N/MT7623A quad core network processor combined with 2GB RAM, six Gigabit Ethernet ports, and optional 802.11ac and 3G connectivity via the three mPCIe slots available on the board. The board also features two HDMI ports, and supports multimedia capabilities such as H.264, MPEG-2, or VC-1 hardware video decoding. Geek Force board preliminary specifications: SoC – MediaTek MT7623A or MT7623N quad-core ARM Cotex-A7 @ 1.3GHz with Mali-450MP GPU (MT7623N only) System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 2GB eMMC or NAND Flash + SD card slot up to 128 GB, and maybe SATA via the mPCIe slots Connectivity – 6 Gigabit Ethernet ports (WAN / LAN behavior defined by firmware), 802.11 b/g/n WiFi & Bluetooth 4.0 via MT6625L with […]

January 25, 2016February 13, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments

Zsun Wifi Card Reader Can Now Run OpenWrt

Zsun Wifi card reader is a tiny micro SD card reader with WiFi connectivity, and while people managed to access the device serial console a few months ago, the plan was to eventually run OpenWrt since it’s based on the popular Atheros AR9331 WiSoC combined with 64MB RAM and 16MB SPI Flash. It would also be one the smallest OpenWrt capable device with dimensions of 30 x 33 mm. A team of Polish managed this feat, and have now posted instructions to install OpenWrt, as well as other documentation, for example a description of the board’s GPIOs. There are four methods to flash OpenWrt: Solder on an Ethernet jack and flash from the original uboot (hard but safe) Reflash the bootloader from the original firmware to one that supports upload over serial (less soldering but fatal if you mess up) Reflash the firmware from the original firmware using mtd_write (easy […]

December 31, 2015January 29, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

Ten Most Popular Posts of 2015 and Statistics on CNX Software

In the second part of 2014, we saw a big jump in performance thanks to Cortex A15 and A17 based SoCs, and higher clocked Cortex A9 processors such as Rockchip RK3288 and Amlogic S812, but in 2015, TV box companies have focused on lowering the price and adding features such as HDMI 2.0, instead of looking for higher and higher CPU and GPU performance, and they’ve also moved to 64-bit ARM platform. Intel also continued its foray into low cost HDMI sticks and mini PCbased on Bay Trail, and later on Cherry Trail based devices. The development boards story was also very much about lower cosst with the $15 Orange Pi PC, follow a few months later by the $5 Raspberry Pi Zero, although people looking for performance at any price still saw the release of Nvidia Jetson TX1 board. It’s was also a big year for IoT with the […]

December 14, 2015December 14, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

WiTi Router Board Powered by Mediatek MT7621A SoC Now Sells for $79

MQmaker launched their WiTi router on Indiegogo in early August, and they raised close to $30,000, enough to go into production. However, some people are understandably wary of crowdfunding campaigns, and likely postponed their decision to see how the project would progress. The good news is that the AC1200 board is now available for $79 + shipping ($9.05 in my case) on Aliexpress. WiTi router specifications have not changed much: Processor – Mediatek MT7621A dual core MIPS 1004Kc processor @ 880Mhz System Memory – 256MB RAM Storage – 16MB SPI NOR flash for firmware, 1x micro SD slot, and 2x SATA 3.0 ports supporting 3.5″ hard drives. Connectivity 2.4 GHz WiFi 802.11b/g/n up to 300Mbps 5 GHz WiFi 802.11a/n/ac up to 867Mbps 2x Gigabit Ethernet WAN ports 4x Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports 2x RF Antenna Connectors USB – 1x USB3.0 port Expansion – 30-pin header including USB, I2S, JTAG, UART, and GPIO […]